A Cuban individual
A new project from Cuban rapper El Individuo humanizes the Cuban perspective, inadvertently flying in the face of the United States Republican Party's agenda.
United States
A hug that listens
Angolans have made themselves in and out of Angola, in conversation with the world; they carry with them the deep look of permanent uncertainty. But also take with them the smile of resistance.
Um abraço em escuta
Ekwa Msangi, realizadora Tanzaniana-Americana, mostra a história de muitos imigrantes com a experiência de uma família angolana de imigração.
History class
What might Black Lives Matter learn from Africanist scholars who have studied inequality outside the US, especially in Africa?
Academic reparation and stepping aside
Reflections from a former President of the African Studies Association (ASA), the largest African Studies association globally, on the future of the discipline.
The hip hop president?
Hip hop and the Black political mainstream more broadly, continues to have hope in the promises of American capitalism.
Like an infant in a suffocating hold
The stories of African immigrants to the United States tell vivid tales of unimaginable anti-Blackness through foreign terrains.
The Black Bill Gates
Beyonce offered me escapism in my childhood. But now I see the contradictions and shortcomings in her claimed radicalness.
Beyond African royalty
Beyoncé, 'The Lion King,' 'Coming to America,' and the complicated politics of African representation in Black American cultural production.
How to curate a pandemic
Three prominent curators on how they are (re-)situating their respective curatorial practices in relation to the political moment.
The pitfalls of African consciousness
It took time to digest Beyonce's Black Is King. Conclusion: it fails to deliver us. Instead, it's just another capitalist construction of the world.
How not to save the planet
In this, the first of a series of posts, we critically look at the implications of climate policy in the most powerful Western country for Africans.
Structural adjustment comes home
Americans could learn a thing or two from Africans’ history of resisting structural adjustment policies.
In the jungles of the Congo
The book 'Emerald Labyrinth' explores American and Congolese efforts to document species biodiversity.
Race, caste and Kamala
Kamala Harris should be critiqued or celebrated not according to a faulty and disingenuous understanding of her lineage, but on the basis of her actual policy positions and future governing vision.
African literature is a country
What if you survey African literature professors to find out which works and writers are most regularly taught? Only a few canonical ones continue to dominate curricula.
GMOs for Africa?
Rather than addressing food scarcity, genetically modified crops may render African farmers and scientists more, not less, reliant on global markets.
Des OGM pour l’Afrique?
Plutôt que de pallier l’insécurité alimentaire, les cultures génétiquement modifiées risquent de rendre les agriculteurs et les scientifiques africains plus, et non moins, dépendants des marchés mondiaux.
Toppling statues as a decolonial ethic
The blitz on monuments signifies not the abandonment of history, but rather the rejection of a narrative of modernity created by the heirs of global plunder.